DX10 cards for the masses

Are you looking forward to all of that DirectX 10 goodness, but aren’t quite ready to shell out a few hundred bucks on GeForce 8-series card? Then you’re in luck, because NVIDIA just announced their budget-friendly mid-range DX10 cards.

The really good news is that you’re not going to lose any of the features you find in the 8800, just less shader units. You’ll be able to find these cards in several different flavors from $89 on up. Granted, with the $89 GeForce 8500GT you’ll only get 16 shaders, a 450MHz core and memory speeds of 800MHz.

The $229 GeForce 8600 GS will pack considerably more power with 32 shaders, a 675MHz core and 2GHz memory. You should be able to find some of these cards available today, with more flavors arriving from manufacturers soon.

NVIDIA GeForce 8500, 8600 made official [via electronista]